too busy sleeping
by silent-entrance
Summary: Sometimes it takes more than missed calls and new messages to fix things. The story of a boy who thought too much, and his best friend who wasn't as brave as he liked to pretend to be. Sora/Riku, side AkuRoku.


**I have been playing with this for months and decided it was probably time to just post it before I get angry with myself and start again. I'm not sure where I'm taking this, to be honest.**

**Not mine, etc etc.**

At 10pm on the night that Sora decided to sort through the piles of boxes stacked in the back of his closet, three potentially life changing things happened.

The first was that he got a text message from a number that he had deleted from his phone. That didn't stop him from recognizing it immediately.

The second was that he discovered a piece of paper he had long forgotten about. Well, the paper itself wasn't interesting, but the childish crayon people who had been scribbled on it were.

_AXEL AND ROXAS AND SORA AND RIKU _it proclaimed under the stick figures (who were all holding hands) and it was as Sora was trying to remember who had actually drawn it all those years ago and push down the feeling threatening to make its way up his throat that he was hit with the third so quickly that he still hadn't had time to recover from the first.

His bedroom door slammed open to reveal his twin brother, who stormed inside and collapsed onto the bed with a dramatic sigh that was so un-Roxas-like that Sora would have been curious about if he weren't so focused on the piece of paper currently in his hands.

Roxas sighed again, louder, before throwing a pillow at his brother's head, clearly annoyed that he wasn't being given enough attention.

"You're acting like Kairi after a bad first date," was the only reaction he got, which was when it was decided that Sora was definitely being bumped down on his 'list of favourite brothers' and that Demyx was definitely being bumped up.

"Fuck you," he responded, making himself more comfortable on his brother's bed and waiting for Sora to crawl out of the closet and join him. There was probably something kind of ironic in that, but Roxas was too tired to try and figure it out.

"What's wrong?" Sora asked from his spot on the floor, not bothering to turn around.

"Axel just kissed me."

Sora glanced down at the text message still up on his phone. "Your best friend, Axel?"

Roxas nodded.

**We need to talk.**

"Well, fuck," he sighed, getting off the floor and collapsing onto the bed next to Roxas, who shifted to accommodate and threw an arm lazily over his brothers stomach. Sora had always needed something to keep him grounded.

When Demyx opened the door to tell his brothers to come to dinner and instead got snores and a jumbled of twin that he couldn't see the beginning of, he didn't bother waking them up. Roxas was always a lot more peaceful when he slept, and all the bitterness he carried around on his shoulders sort of made his blue eyes lose their pretty.

/

It was the next day when he was hunting through the fridge for the chocolate that he _knew_ was hidden in there somewhere that Sora decided that maybe he should answer that text. Because he wasn't all that good at understanding the hidden words people meant under the ones they actually said, but he was kind of an expert at Riku-Speak and knew that **we need to talk **could actually mean about forty different things, none of which he particularly wanted to think about.

"Hey," Roxas said, walking into the kitchen and jumping up onto the counter, flicking the back of Sora's head as he walked past. Sora turned around and shut the fridge, chocolate in hand.

"So are you and Axel going to get married and have bitchy, pyromaniac babies now, or what?"

"I don't know yet," Roxas answered, digging through the fruit bowl next to him for a banana. Sora held his tongue, because he didn't really think now was the time to be making gay jokes. "I was walking from the bus stop and he was there, and he asked if he could chat to me and I asked why he was acting so weird, and then he kissed me. And then I came home and you were in the closet. So, nothing new there, at least."

People called him gay so often, Sora really didn't think there was much point in bothering to come out.

"Weird," he murmured, raising an eyebrow.

"I know! Like, why does he go from being my best friend one day and raping me the next?"

"It's not rape if you like it, Rox," Sora snorted, slipping his hands into his pockets and feeling around for his phone. "Riku texted me last night. Said we needed to talk."

Sora wasn't quite sure what the look on Roxas' face meant. He wasn't quite sure if he wanted to find out.

"So did you answer him?" Roxas dropped the banana peel into the bin next to him and shifted his legs on the bench slightly, making a gap in between for Sora to fit himself into. He draped his arms over his brother's shoulders and buried his face into a mess of brown hair, not sure what answer he wanted to hear.

"I didn't know if I should," Sora answered, leaning in his brother and fiddling with the block of chocolate he had discovered. Roxas just nodded, not knowing what to say. They never did, when it came to Riku.

/

"Hey," Demyx said, leaning against the door and observing the mess inside Sora's room. "You look like shit."

"Shut up," Sora mumbled half-heartedly, standing on his tip-toes to grab another box from the top of the cupboard. And he did, was the thing; he was pale and messy and frowning and very much Not Sora.

"Riku 'wants to talk'," Roxas supplied from his spot on the bed, not looking up from the computer on his lap. Demyx nodded. _Ah._

"Traitor," Sora rolled his eyes, throwing a shoe at his twin brother. "Roxas and Axel kissed."

"Okay, firstly," Roxas said, narrowing his eyes as he put the laptop aside and looking up at his older brother. "_We _did not kiss. _He_ kissed and _I_ stood there. Secondly, Sora still hasn't answered Riku. Which is just rude. I suggest we do it for him."

Demyx snorted, pushing Sora out of the way as he admitted defeat and stepped aside for the box to be grabbed for him. Which was weird, because Sora didn't admit defeat a lot.

"So, Roxas, we've all known that was going to happen since you were like, twelve," Demyx laughed, grinning at the glare his little brother was sending his way. "Sor, I forgot how fun things get when Riku is around. What does he want to talk about?"

"I have no idea. He just texted me last night."

"Are you going to call him?"

"I don't know."

"Do you _want_ to call him?"

"I don't know."

And the thing was, Sora _didn't _know. He didn't know if he was willing to jump back into the mess that was his (ex?) best friend, didn't know if he could deal with losing him again. Riku was kind of a full time responsibility.

/

The full time responsibility called him that night. Sora was on the floor of his bedroom cupboard, reading through a box of old birthday cards with the light of his phone when it vibrated and he slid his finger across the screen and said 'hello' before his brain could catch up with his body.

"You ignored my message, So," the boy on the other end of the line said. Only, he wasn't really a boy any more. He just acted like one.

"Sorry," he answered, feeling sort of wicked for using that word without meaning it.

"I thought we were friends."

_So did I._

"Sorry."

"Stop apologising."

"Sorry."

"Sora," Riku huffed, but the smile was obvious in his voice. "Sor, I really need to talk to you. Why are you ignoring me all of a sudden?"

"Not ignoring," Sora answered, flicking through the box next to him absentmindedly. "Just refusing to speak to. Besides, you're one to talk."

"I miss you," Riku sighed, and Sora closed his eyes. He didn't think there was enough room in him to hold all of these things trying to break him, and that he might have to start selling his kidney and spinal cord and ribcage so that there was a place for everything to fit without it showing.

"I know," he answered, and then didn't say anything else. Neither did Riku. They just sat there, Riku trying to think of what to say and Sora waiting for an apology that he knew wouldn't come, until his phone started beeping and it died, leaving him in the dark with a sour taste in his mouth and the ghost of Riku's breathing in his ear.

Sora didn't think the cupboard was big enough to hold the sound. For someone who 'needed to talk,' Riku sure didn't say much.

/

When the kids were younger and smiled that smile five year olds have before they realise there isn't always something to smile at, they used to play a game called 'I Wish.'

Sora was the best at it, hands down. Roxas used to wish for little boy things, like a race car or a dinosaur. Riku wished for sad things, like his daddy to come home and his ma to stop crying, even though he never said those ones out loud. Kairi wished to be a princess, and Axel wished for fire- he'd always been a weird sort of kid.

But Sora- Sora had a mind that no one had ever been able to figure out. He wished for these magical worlds, worlds with battles and fairies and boats and pirates and wizards and weapons and whatever else a five year old mind thought was needed; and he would tell the others all about them, until it stopped being a game of 'I Wish' and just became a game of pretend, or maybe war, depending on how tough Kairi was feeling that particular day.

Sora never told any of the others, but he still played sometimes. Not hugely- just sometimes when he needed it, like when his parents left him and his brother home alone the week before their 12th birthday with a 17 year old Demyx and forgot to tell them, or when he got phone calls late at night from a sad little girl about how she missed how things used to be and that she was _so sorry, Sor, so fucking sorry, _even though it was never her fault.

Or, you know, when he did something stupid like fall in love with his best friend and think it was a good idea to tell him.

/

Riku had kissed Sora, when he was 6 and curious, so Sora had kissed Riku, when he was 16 and drunk.

He didn't really think anything of it at the time, because they were always doing stupid things (_"Hey Sora, bet you don't have the balls to jump off the roof onto the trampoline!" "Hey Roxas, bet you wouldn't have the guts to tell Hayner that his hair looks stupid!" "Hey Nam, bet you wouldn't ask out Riku!") _so he just sort of added it to his list of 'Dumbass Things We Do Which Seemed Smart At The Time.' It drifted somewhere around the middle, after that time when Axel set his lawn chair on fire to see what would happened but before that time Kairi decided that she liked older men and Demyx decided Sora wasn't allowed to have her over to the house until that phase was over.

Sora kissed Riku in the basement of Kairi's house, because there was loud music upstairs and a nice sort of quiet filling the empty-other-than-them room they were in. Because his entire body was tingly from whatever was in the cup that had been shoved into his hand, because they were lying next to each other on the floor and Drunk Riku was his absolute favourite, all laughing at nothing and wide eyed, like the roof of Kairi's basement was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. Because when their hands accidentally-on-maybe-a-little-bit-of-purpose touched, neither of them moved away. Because Sora had sort of been in love with Riku since he was like, 5, when his first kiss had been stolen from him by his best friend and _he didn't care._

So he leant over and Riku scrunched up his face because Sora's hair was tickling his nose. He leant over and then sort of lost his balance a little bit and then there were hands on his hips to keep him from falling, or maybe it was to do something else, and then they were kissing, and there were hands everywhere and lips everywhere. The hands that had been on his hips shifted a bit, running over his ass and down his legs, and Sora wondered how he had yet to fall when he realised he had a leg on either side of his best friends waist and also his hands were grabbing Riku's hair (which was definitely as soft as he'd always thought it would be). And then Riku rolled them over so that he was on top (because even in this, he had to win) and he was smiling and Sora was giggling and they were probably moving a bit faster than they should have been, at 16-and-17-and-laughing-and-drunk, because there were shirts on the floor and hands shyly brushing places they shouldn't have been and pants slowly coming undone, until someone slammed a door upstairs and Riku jumped away from Sora, leaving him panting and breathless and pink cheeked and half naked on the floor of their best friends basement with his pants undone and his body protesting the sudden lack of contact.

Sora kissed Riku when he was 16 and drunk, and Riku ran away from him when he was 17 and scared.

Riku ran away, to live with the father he had always hated, and Sora hadn't heard from him in 6 months. And when there were 7 missed calls and 16 text messages on his phone, he decided to hide it safely under a pile of dirty clothes in the corner of the room, because he was scared of ghosts.

Riku was good at talking, but he never really said anything.

/

And really, it was almost _too _clichéd, the way it was all falling apart.

"Hey," Sora said, standing next to the bed and trying to look as though he hadn't just beaten his twin brother awake with a pillow at 4am on a Sunday morning.

"Hey," Roxas answered, shifting so that there was room for Sora to crawl in next to him and choosing to ignore the fact that it was Too Early and that it definitely looked like his brother had been crying.

He sort of figured there wasn't much point in pondering over it, because Sora wasn't the type of kid to be up at 4am, waking up his brother because he couldn't handle it on his own.

"I don't know what to do," Sora explained once he was comfortable, resting his head on the blondes shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut tight. Roxas just nodded; neither did he.

/

Sora was still wearing his boxers and t-shirt when he answered the door to a _very _nervous Axel after he had crawled out of his brothers bed and down the stairs.

"Hey," the brunette said, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck, not sure what he was-or-wasn't allowed to say. Demyx didn't have the same concerns.

"It's our favourite lover boy!" He cried when he walked into the room to find out who was at the house and saw the redhead leaning awkwardly against the doorframe. "Roxie's still asleep, I'll go get him. Don't worry; I'll make sure he brushes his teeth."

Axel opened his mouth to say something to Sora as his older brother bounced enthusiastically up the stairs after sending the red head a dramatic wink, but Sora put a finger to his mouth, smiling slightly.

A bang, and then-

"Fuck _off, _Demyx!"

Laughing, Sora nodded, letting Axel speak.

"Do, um." Sora had never seen Nervous Axel before. Nervous Axel was cute. "Do you think I've fucked up too bad?"

Sora didn't answer; instead, he looked up above him. If he had x-ray vision (_I wish I)_ he would have seen his twin swearing as he hunted through his drawers for a clean t-shirt, frantically running his fingers through his hair as he threw things at Demyx to get him to stop laughing.

Sora couldn't see this. He could, however, hear it.

He grinned at Axel, who smiled shyly back. Shy Axel was a new one too. "Nah, I think you're good."

Turning towards to kitchen, he walked out of the room, heading for the cutlery drawer where he had hidden his phone last night. Dirty laundry wasn't working.

**19 missed calls. 28 new text messages.**

("_Hey, Sora?"_

"_Yeah, Riku?"_

"_We'll always be best friends, yeah? No matter what?"_

"_Course, Riku. Why?"_

"_Just checking.")_

"You know," Axel said, following him into the small room and jumping up onto the bench next to him. "You could always just answer the phone."

Sora didn't like Regular Axel as much as Nervous Axel. He wanted Nervous Axel back.

"I don't think I want to hear what he has to say."

"Are you sure?"

They were ganging up on Sora, all of them. Because he wasn't sure, and they knew that, and _why was everyone so concerned with Sora's love life?_

He kind of felt like exploding. He thought he might have to sell his lungs, too.


End file.
